Night Seeker Read Online Free PDF Page B

chair. His leather pants shimmered in the dim light hanging over the table.
    “So…you have a copy of our history. You know, not a terribly wise idea of you to advertise so in front of me.” He slowly lowered his foot to the ground and slid his hands in his pockets and sauntered toward me.
    “I wouldn’t have, if I’d thought about it first.” My mouth had gotten me in trouble more than once.
    Lannan backed me up to the wall, lifting the book out of my hands. He flipped through it, occasionally glancing at me. I had no idea how vampires read, considering their eyes were jet with no white, no gleam other than the sparkle that made them look like obsidian orbs. But read they did. And Lannan Altos was actually a professor at the New Forest Conservatory. I had the feeling he’d abused his authority far more than once.
    Grieve let out a low growl and shifted into a wolf, shoving himself between the vampire and me. Peyton and Luna gasped. Wrath stiffened as Kaylin stepped forward. Lannan just stared at the beast with unblinking eyes.
    I caught my breath. Grieve was really pissed. Anger wasn’t the only reason he took wolf form, but Lannan had pushed his buttons—his territorial instincts had been invaded. He stood his ground, forcing Lannan away from me, his gaze never leaving the vampire. I poised, ready to throw myself between the two. But then Wrath came to my rescue.
    “Altos, put down the book. Leave it for now. Grieve—back away. The vampire will not hurt our Cicely tonight.” It was a command, not a question.
    Lannan turned to my father, locking his gaze. After a moment, he shrugged and deliberately dropped the book on the floor at my feet. “No matter if you have it. We are not terribly vulnerable to your kind, so feel free to read it. If nothing else, perhaps you’ll learn why you should pay proper respect.”
    He sauntered past Grieve, refusing to acknowledge him. Grieve shifted back, but I could feel my wolf tattoo still snuffling. Chatter reached out, touched Grieve on the arm and gave him a warning shake of the head. Grieve glowered and shook him off but did nothing.
    Cambyra Fae were known as the shifting Fae. My father—Wrath—was an owl shifter, as was I, even though I was only a half-breed. Grieve could shift into wolf form, and Chatter could turn into a pillar of flame, I’d found out.
    From the very beginning, when Krystal had dragged me away from the Veil House, I’d dreamed of a wolf following me, watching over me. When I was fourteen, I began to see him in the shadows, watching me, and I thought he might be a guardian of some sort. I still hadn’t known at that time that Grieve could take wolf form. A year later, Dane—my mother’s boyfriend of the month—and I got high one night while she was out turning tricks, and he tattooed my vision onto my stomach.
    Dane had already given me three other tattoos. On my left breast, a feral Fae girl peeked through the leaves of a deadly nightshade plant. Both upper arms were banded with identical blackwork tats—a pair of owls flying over a silver moon, with a dagger piercing through it. And then he tattooed my wolf for me.
    An ivy vine wove its way across my left thigh. Dappled with silver roses, it crossed my lower abs, extending to my ribs under my left arm. Interspersed among the roses was a trail of violet skulls, and right at my naval, a grayish silver wolf stared out at the world, his eyes emerald and glowing.
    After that, I would feel the wolf shift and growl when danger was present. At times, when I was lonely, I talked to the tattoo, and it felt like the wolf was actually listening. And then, when I returned home for a brief visit a few months after getting my wolf tattoo, Grieve had met me out in the woods, and I realized that instead of trusting him like I had when I was a child, my heart had shifted, and at seventeen, I had grown up and was falling in love with the Fae Prince.

     
    The Golden Wood was in full glory, trees thick with